If you’ve read my rotational power articles previously featured on Just Fly Sports, you know that I see the rotational movements of the body, particularly of the core, as an area that is generally underutilized by the average sprint/jump/basketball/S&C coach. These rotational components of the core can, when correctly performed, initiate stretch reflexes, affect muscle sequencing patterns, and help keep athletes moving fluidly, powerfully and injury-free, all at the same time. What could be better than that!
The Story Behind This Article
Most of my athleticism comes from high jump, so although I can dunk a basketball better than most, I couldn’t hit certain dunks that I felt like I ought to be able to. Last May, I was shooting around at a high jump shake out day at NCAA Championships with one of our team’s high jumpers, soon to be All-American (now defending Indoor Champion) Stefan Duvivier. After both throwing some very low-key dunks, it came up how frustrated I was that I could never hit a reverse windmill even in my high jump prime.
After seeing me try once, the former college basketball player saw where I was going wrong.
“You just have to bring the ball across your body.”
And voila! 2 weeks later I started to hit a dunk I spent 5 years frustrated by. Not only that, but the basic thoughts behind this article were born.
What is Rotational Dunking?
Rotational Dunking is just a way of talking about what all the greatest single leg in-game and dunk contest dunkers do already. However, if you are reading this article, I am assuming you aren’t completely satisfied with your vertical jump. If you aren’t jumping up to your potential, it is likely because either you don’t hit these positions (starting and finishing) at all, you don’t coordinate these positions in harmony and with perfect timing, you don’t set them up well, or you lack the ability to create power in these positions. This article will address all these components and more.
Keys to Rotational Dunking:
- Correct starting position – the “windup”
- Correct finishing position – the “block”
- The Second Block and its timing
- Timing of the starting and finishing positions
- Ability to create power using the core before the limbs
- The Windup
The windup is what I will refer to as the starting position. A 1-legged jump will always come after a running start so it may be a misnomer to call it the starting position, but for our purposes it will do. The approach to the jump will always determine the ability to hit this starting position to some degree, however, elite athletes and skilled in-game dunkers can hit this position with skill even when on-court conditions do not provide an ideal runup.
The position is here:
Important things to notice:
Big time shoulder dip. Russ is fully wound.
The ball is actively placed besides the takeoff side hip – as you can see in the picture, great one legged dunkers pretty much always hit this ball position at takeoff. Like, almost no exceptions. It is the setup to be able to punch the ball up and across your body to aid in vertical lift.
The whole body is turned, not only the arms. It is important that it is not only the hands and arms that put the ball on the hip, by placing the ball there the great dunkers are winding up the stretch reflexes of the muscles in between their ribcage and pelvis. Notice how White’s right shoulder and left hip are in front of his left shoulder and right hip. This is like the coiling of a spring, storing elastic energy that will ripple through every limb of the body upon release. Putting the ball on the hip using only arm movements will not accomplish the goal of creating a wound-up, spring-like effect in the abdomen.
The center of mass is placed over the takeoff foot. It is crucial to be able to take advantage of these stretch reflexes that the center of mass be placed over the takeoff leg. A way to learn this movement is to feel your pants zipper over your takeoff foot and your sternum over your pants zipper as well as dipping your left shoulder lower than your right. Those 3 crucial things will allow the stretch reflexes created above to fire your body upwards during the jump, if they do not occur, all that rotational power you stored will either make you jump sideways or your body will stop producing power so that you don’t jump sideways.
Same goes for sprinting. Usain was the king of the shoulder dip to get extra weight on the stance leg. Often mis-interpreted as swagger, he even walks getting his center of mass over his stance leg this way.
The last thing to consider is that the ball should be actively pulled into this wound up position to more strongly create stretch reflexes in the core. Watch Russ Westbrook here – he only has a split second to catch and jump, and he still makes time to pull the ball actively into the wound up takeoff position. It is that crucial.
https://youtu.be/vQrhHoILRqI?t=2m23s
- The First Block
If anyone has done track for any amount of time they have probably heard the phrase “drive your arms” to help get more out of a jump. However, it is not the driving upwards that gives you more lift, but the aggressive stopping of the arms.
Try this experiment: First, sitting upright on a chair or the floor, swing your arms back and then throw them as high as you can towards the sky. Just release them at the end, be as aggressive as you can in getting them to the sky. Feel any lift?
Next, in the same position, with the same windup, swing them aggressively but as soon as your hands pass your eyes halt their movement as if they hit a wall. Any different from the first test?
If you did this correctly, you will have noticed your body rising slightly off of your seat/the floor in the second condition – it is the block of arm swing that contributes to vertical lift. The arms must stop around when the hands pass the eyes to when the elbows reach shoulder height. The same high jump principle applies to dunking as well. Watch (you may need slow motion) how James White blocks the upward drive of the ball as he drives it up and across his body en route to a foul line two-handed jam (two-handed jam video). This trick will also unlock trickier dunks like windmills (windmill video) and reverse cradles, amongst others, because this block technique not only sets up those dunks, it actually helps create the height for them as well.
- The Second Block, and Correct Timing for Both
The Second Block is the blocking of the thigh as the free leg drives upwards. The same principle as above applies: it is not the driving up of the leg that counts but the aggressive drive and the subsequent stopping of the thigh below the waist that allows for lift to be generated. The James White freeze frame above is pretty textbook in terms of a correct blocking of both the thigh and arms. His technique is so good that he makes this free throw line tomahawk look easy at 30 years old.
The next piece of this technique is timing – both blocks occur as takeoff finishes. The goal should be to “catch” a good takeoff where all these components finish in a harmonious singular moment of explosive power. Most athletes will improve their dunks substantially by just becoming aware of this timing component as something to shoot for.
- Timing the Start and Finish
In short, the windup begins punching diagonally up and across the body as the takeoff step hits and both blocks occur as the foot is releasing from the ground. This all happens in a split second, and the difference between the timing of a great jump and a not so great jump is often in the hundredths of a second, maybe thousandths. This is why starting to learn this technique from a shorter approach where you have less speed is a good idea, it is easier to feel positions and timing here as opposed to only practicing all-out.
- Creating Power Using the Core Before the Limbs
Lastly, it needs to be said that the forces produced in order to execute a jump from these positions must be initiated at the core, or they will not have any power. In the exercises listed below, attention must be paid to not only the positions achieved and the timing of those positions, but also which part of the body moves first. If one wants to be able to move fluidly and with effortless force, the core of the body needs to initiate everything. A good cue I took from an old Boo Schexnayder throwing video is to apply force to a moving object – that is, the basketball (or in these drills, weight/medicine ball) should already be moving due to the winding and unwinding of your body, then and only then can you add force by driving your arms. The same is true for your legs, the pelvis’ rotation causes some movement in the leg sweeping back into the ground, then and only then do you think about triple extending or however else you may want to teach takeoff.
The Exercises
Asymmetrical Medicine Ball Skips
OK, so this one takes a bit of explanation. This is a skip for height on the takeoff (TO) side leg and a skip for distance on the non-takeoff (NT) leg, while getting the ball to the takeoff side hip as the NT leg skips for distance and punching it diagonally upward as the TO leg skips for height. Prerequisites for even trying this exercise are the ability to perform skips for distance and skips for height correctly (with good posture and good timing of the arm and knee blocks). Then I would probably learn to do skips for distance and skips for height with the medicine ball, as the coordination for these can be a bit tricky. I like this exercise for a few reasons: one, it forces the athlete to engage their core and have decent posture during the entire exercise, two, it forces the athlete to really twist and wind up to punch the ball upwards, and three, the sensory input of having a ball with some weight to it during this drill tends to create trunk rotation even before coaching occurs. The timing of the block of the arms will be a bit different from having a basketball in your hands, but after reading a lot of HMMR Media’s posts on throwing I believe that if you can learn to come close to timing the block with a medicine ball in hand, it will still transfer to a much lighter implement (the basketball). All of the coaching tips from the above technique analysis apply here.
Diagonal Snatch
This exercise is awesome. It can touches so many domains of athletic movement at once – power, stability, coordination, posture, even some functional mobility. I also love that without a barbell, you can more easily take it to go and perform this one outside all summer long. I’ve used it in warmups, circuits, and speed focused weight room sessions at various times as it can be pretty versatile. Keys to performing it correctly are loading the movement “wound up” with the plate outside the stance knee, initiating the movement with the hip first, and ending in a “hip lock” position where the knee is above parallel and the free side of the pelvis is higher than and in front of the stance side. If athletes understand the start and end positions of this exercise not a whole lot of coaching is required, and you get a whole lot of bang for your buck, as stated above. I have also been experimenting with my new aquabag, and find it to have all the same effects as the plate version plus a little extra demand on stability.
With Weight Plate
With Aquabag
Diagonal Swing Heave With Medicine Ball
This is essentially the same exercise as above, but instead of decelerating the weight and catching it overhead, you are now accelerating the weight through the entire movement. This movement is a hip hinge (just like a good single leg takeoff), and because the weight is lighter this is slightly more specific to jumping high. It is important that the athlete’s center of mass be placed over the takeoff leg, pants zipper over the big toe. We can also focus more on a shoulder dip by starting with the left side (distance from shoulder to hip) shorter than the right in the windup phase.
Drop Takeoff MB Heave
Same ideas as the last couple exercises but we begin to drift even more into plyometric territory. Step off a box wound up, hit the ground and release the spring. By stepping off the box you can really focus on getting your center onto the takeoff leg and really dip that shoulder. The more effective your windup and the better your posture/center of mass location, the more pop this throw will have. It is important that the foot hit the ground with a wholefooted contact, anything on your toes tells you that you are off balance, likely leaning forward with your torso or anteriorly tilting your pelvis. Both are big no-no’s for one footed jumping, at least if your goal is to get off the ground…
To recap, knowing how to use the body’s super powerful stretch reflexes, particularly in the core, can turn a fast break dunker into a baseline dunker and a tomahawk into a windmill in a very short period of time. Exercises that take advantage of these movements are super helpful for learning the skill and strengthening the specific muscles and movements involved, but the technique must also be practiced – if you want to use this in a game, you had better practice it, perhaps first by yourself, second with a friendly defender, and third in a game type scenario to make it automatic.
Happy Dunking!
About Sam Wuest
Sam Wuest is currently an acupuncture student at New England School of Acupuncture and a track & field coach at Tufts University. Previously an All-Conference Division I athlete, Wuest holds a Master’s degree from Boston University in Education & Coaching. Certified as a Strength and Conditioning Coach and Coaching Specialist in multiple event areas from the US Track & Field & Cross Country Coaches Association, he has worked with a diverse array of athletes and coaches from coaching in Boston Public Schools to working under Ukrainian Olympic Coach Alex Ponomarenko. Wuest has played sports all of his life and practiced Zen Meditation, qi gong and tai chi for nearly a decade. Learn more about his unique approach at medium.com/daodesport
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